


Mother May I

by Gotcocomilk



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Characters not as dead as they appear, Eventual Happy Ending, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, GIVE HIM FAMILY, Hurt/Comfort, I needed Starrk to adopt Ichigo okay, M/M, Nonconsensual Yeeting, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:21:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23600740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gotcocomilk/pseuds/Gotcocomilk
Summary: Mother, may I step forward? Mother, may I raise my sword? Mother, may I kill him?Mother, what happens when you break the rules?Or: Shunsui's Zanpakutō picked a game he'd never played before, with unintended consequences. Starrk just really wants to sleep.
Relationships: Coyote Starrk & Kurosaki Ichigo, Coyote Starrk & Urahara Kisuke, Kyouraku Shunsui/Coyote Starrk
Comments: 188
Kudos: 681





	1. Step 1

**Author's Note:**

> Alright so before we begin-- 
> 
> Mother May I is a game in which one person is the "mother" and everyone else wants to approach them by asking for permission to do things (i.e., take a few steps forward, etc). If you take an action without asking permission, you are sent back to the beginning.
> 
> Also this is a massively fun project but I don't have enough drafted to promise consistent updates, though I will work on it as much as I can! 
> 
> Enjoy!

_Mother, may I step forward? Mother, may I raise my sword? Mother, may I kill him?_

_Mother, what happens when you break the rules?_

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

“You didn’t ask ‘Mother may I,’” the Captain said, with a smile that was a touch too sad. It was cold too, like the endless nights under the moon of Hueco Mundo.

Starrk didn’t want to see that smile on an enemy, when he’d hardly seen it on a friend. When he hardly had friends at all, the corrosive power of his reiatsu grinding them to dust and nothingness.

_You didn’t ask_ , echoed the shadows surrounding the man’s sword. It sounded like a child laughing, and with Lilynette’s warmth fading from the edges of his soul, it made Starrk pause.

It was so playful. It was more playful than they’d ever been, on the dunes of Hueco Mundo. It made his instincts flare up too, like hackles across the top of his spine. He leapt back, wolves howling in the corners of his mind.

He didn’t stop fast enough.

_You broke the rules_ , echoed the shadows, and this time it was delighted and crooning. _Back to the start you go!_

“I’m sorry for this,” the captain said, and the look in his eyes was as sad as it was ruthless. Starrk thought he might understand it, for all that he’d never felt such duty. He wanted to understand it, wanted that more than anything.

But it didn’t matter. The hooks that dug into his skin were too brutal for that apology to mean anything.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

The Primera Espada vanished, into the laughing fangs of Shunsui’s shadows. The man didn’t even seem to fight it in the end, fingers falling down to hang at his sides.

Damn, Shunsui thought, letting the darker shadows of his hat his eyes. The Primera’s stare had been so lonely as he fell. It had been accepting too, and that was worse.

Shunsui hated fighting enemies he respected. He hated the evil of war more, but he still raised his swords and did his duty.

Duty didn’t ask for good men— only willing ones.

“Never did mind your damn business, even in a fight. What did you do?” One of the visored asked,a familiar face greeting Shunsui beneath white-bone mask. There was a sword hanging in loose fingers, where it had once been a club, and marks of a rough fight dotted Love’s body.

Starrk really had been strong.

“He broke the rules,” Shunsui said, staring at the empty sky where the Primera had howled with a hundred fierce wolves. The evils of war didn’t care about his attachments, and neither did duty.

But it was a shame. He’d liked the man.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Starrk fell out of the shadows beside a river. His hands pressed into the earth before him, rain washing down his hair and spilling over his knuckles. It washed over trembling fingers too, until he was soaked through and his hands were clean.

He was not bleeding. He was not really wounded either, for all that he would never recover.

The ground was cold, but Starrk could only feel the void in his soul.

Lilynette was gone. She was gone, and he had been beaten into the ground for a cause he’d never believed in. The others had been beaten too, died to soul reaper steel and the power of people who did believe in their cause.

Their enemies had fought together, moving in and out of each other’s battles like they cared.Thecaptain with the ruthless sword had traced Starrk while he was fighting the visored, robe fluttering behind his sight.

Was that what it meant to be comrades?

What was that like, he wondered, rain soaking into his skin and through the fabric of his clothes. The ground beneath his hands was colder than the sands of Hueco Mundo, but Starrk hardly felt the chill.

What was it like to fight beside someone who wasn’t yourself?

Starrk didn’t know. Aizen never raised a finger for them, not during this battle or any other. The Espada had fought alone or against each other, for all the years they had walked the halls of Los Noches.

They had never cared for each other, but it didn’t matter. Starrk had cared about them, had been grateful to Aizen for a chance to stand beside other souls and feel their warmth. He had slept in a white stone palace and felt some of that painful loneliness dissolve away for the first time.

They didn’t care, but Starrk did. He didn’t want them to die.

It was that thought that made him press up from the cold ground. It was the fear of being alone again, that made him stand and look out through the fog of rain.

It was then, that he realized something was very wrong.

_You broke the rules, back you go! Back back back you go! To the start, to his start!_

There was no battlefield around him, for all that this looked like the Living World. There was no press of reiatsu in the air, though there was something lingering at the edge of Starrk’s senses. There were no swords glinting in the air, and no bright sky overhead to welcome Aizen to a throne.

There was only rain and a riverbank, washing everything he knew away.

Starrk was away from the battle, but he wasn’t alone.

A hollow hungered, a few steps away. It was big, as single-souled hollows went, mask glinting and bright under the press of rain. Its size dwarfed the body lying across the ground, too still to be alive. The hollow was laughing too, rough and messy, blood dripping down a bone mask with each breath.

It was not as messy as the soul that dangled from long fingers, twitching and half eaten. With each bite, the soul jerked, chain of fate jangling over the sound of rain.

It was a sight Starrk had seen before. It was something he had done before, as a menos, though he didn’t remember the long hunger.

He only ever remembered the loneliness.

Another bite, another trembling jerk. The hollow was the type to play with its food, then, if the soul hadn’t been devoured already.

It would be a painful death.

Starrk sighed, as the rain washed across his skin. He was too tired for this, too tired for a war and bonds that no one cared about but him. 

He was tired, and so he sighed again.

It didn’t cover the gasp. Starrk looked down quickly, sniper-eyes scanning the ground like it held threats. That gasp had been a tiny thing, quiet and nearly sobbing.

It had sounded like a child.

It took him one step to kneel beside the body on the ground. It was a woman, with burnt orange hair and strong arms that had curled protectively towards the ground. He rolled her out of the way gently, feeling the cold press of dead skin on his fingers.

She would never recover, but he only spent a second caring.

There was a boy lying on the grass beneath her, small and quiet. The kid was shaking, shoulders twitching with each crunch of hungry teeth and shirt stained bloody. His eyes were open and wide with fear, but for all that the boy hadn’t run away. Starrk didn’t know if it was fear or shock or the body that had held him close, but—

The soul, Starrk thought, looking at the body on the ground. She’d tried to protect the boy.

She had died, protecting him.

The rain didn’t stop. Starrk couldn’t stop himself either, not when water dripped down his collar and the ache of Lilynette was so fresh.

He ripped the hollow in two with a single finger. It was easy as breathing, easy as every battle but the last had ever been.

He had always been too strong.

The hollow with the hungry mouth dissolved, and the rain didn’t stop falling. Starrk would need to leave soon, or the kid would dissolve too under the strain of the Primera’s reiatsu. He caught the woman’s soul as she fell, laying her out on the ground next to the kid. The rain clung to her clothes, washing the blood from her wounds and the hair from her face.

She looked a little like the Kurosaki boy, he thought, staring at glassy eyes and a proud jaw. She looked too human to survive these wounds.

The woman’s body was dead. Nothing would stop that now, and half her soul was devoured and missing. Her fingers twitched across the ground, but she didn’t shift. Couldn’t probably, given her wounds.

He wanted to sigh, hair slicked back in the endless rain. For once in his life, Starrk needed a soul reaper. He didn’t want to devour her, but he couldn’t leave her here to hollowfy. She had tried to protect the boy. That meant she’d go after him first, when the hunger painted a mask on her face.

The wounds on Starrk’s soul were too fresh to allow that.

He shifted, ready to reach forward and eat a soul for the first time in a long time. He had stopped, after becoming a Vasto Lorde. He had never wanted to grow stronger, after all.

But a hand grabbed the edge of his robes before he moved far, small and trembling. It was determined too, for all that the boy’s eyes were wide with something worse than fear.

Starrk didn’t move.

The kid could see him, under the press of endless rain and the shadows of night. The kid could _touch_ him, and didn’t dissolve into nothingness from Starrk’s reiatsu.

Those fingers were small, as small as Lilynette’s had been, clinging to his side.

Starrk couldn’t move.

“Hey kid,” he said, after a breathless moment where all he heard was an annoyed voice and all he saw were bright eyes that had looked nothing like his. He knelt down, crouching beside the soul and her son. The kid— boy, with bright orange hair to match the woman’s, and eyes that were wide enough to be sightless— didn’t flinch. There was no movement other than the hand on Starrk’s robes, and only quick breaths told Starrk the kid was alive at all.

What would Lilynette have done, if he’d died and left her alone? What would Starrk do, now that she had died and left him with a wound that wouldn’t heal?

He didn’t know, but he knew he couldn’t leave the boy here. He couldn’t eat the woman’s soul either, not when the kid could see him.

He reached out a hand and caught small fingers in the palm of his hand, watched the breaths grow faster. The kid’s stare was shifting towards the soul, and with each second the kid went quieter.

“Kid, look at me. Don’t look over there, look at me.” Slowly, glassy eyes turned to meet his. Slowly, they faded into understanding.

Slowly, they faded into a child’s fear.

Starrk tried to remember if he’d ever had to comfort Lilynette, if she had ever needed him to step up and shield her from the world.

But no. She was him, after all, and they’d both known too much of loneliness and hunger to need protecting.

Maybe if he’d given more of his soul to that wolf instead of her, he wouldn’t have a gaping wound to haunt him. Maybe if he’d fought harder, or not at all, Starrk wouldn’t be alone.

Maybe. Or maybe he’d just be tired, as he always was.

He did know Lilynette had liked it when he’d touched her hair, in the long days of sleep in Hueco Mundo. He raised careful fingers, put a hand on the kid’s head and pulled the boy to his chest. The kid was small, and warm, even as the rain washed over both of them.

At last, there was a sound.

It started low, as a quiet sob. Then it broke loud and helpless, until the boy was crying into his robes and a small body was shaking in his arms.

Starrk wouldn’t have moved if Aizen himself demanded it.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Isshin hadn’t thought this would be the end. He hadn’t thought enough, not when the echos of a hollow had swirled across the edges of his mind. It had been near Masaki, but it didn’t matter. His trust in her was absolute, as was her strength.

He’d flipped the page of his book, and ignored it. That was the greatest mistake he had ever made, but he hadn’t thought.

He hadn’t thought the hollow would reach her. He hadn’t thought this would happen, not with Masaki’s strength and skill.

Isshin hadn’t thought she would die when there was so much to live for.

His shoes slipped every few steps, the rain making the ground slick and treacherous. Isshin didn’t stop, not even when the weak legs of his gigai shook like he’d taken a sword to the gut.

He couldn’t feel her anymore. He couldn’t feel Masaki’s sun, shining through his soul and warming him.

He couldn’t feel his sun, so he couldn’t slow, not even a second.

The river was where he found her, body laying on the ground with a bloody wound running up her back.

Isshin didn’t need to go closer to know she was dead.

He couldn’t feel the sun. He couldn’t breathe either, for all his battle experience and the years of leading a squad. He hadn’t thought this could happen.

He hadn’t thought.

But he had to think, for his family. Isshin had a son and two daughters, and he couldn’t break here. He couldn’t. Masaki would never forgive him, if he didn’t protect their son. He had to think, so Isshin forced his eyes up and away to look for a small body. He didn’t feel the hollow’s reiatsu, but that didn’t mean it was gone yet.

He had to think.

Ichigo was standing a few feet away, gripping air and crying like the world had broken apart. And hadn’t it? Hadn’t everything broken? The sun was gone, and the rain washed it away. Isshin thought he’d never really enjoy the rain again.

It was only habit and long training that had Isshin catching the hint of invisible hands in Ichigo’s hair, the way the rain missed his son’s body to land around him.

They weren’t the only ones standing here.

No hollow would hold a child like that, but a soul reaper might. Ichigo had been seeing ghosts since he was born with hair like the sun and a soul just as bright. Masaki had watched it with a smiling pride Isshin could only melt and swoon before.

He’s going to be such a good older brother, she’d said, after the first time Ichigo had reached out to help a ghost.

She was right.

If a soul reaper was here, that meant the hollow was likely dead and not just gone. It meant that—

That Masaki had passed.

Isshin would be grateful tomorrow. He’d be happy she was in soul society and not in the belly of a hollow tomorrow.

Tonight, he pulled his son from the hands of a stranger and hugged him close.

“He—“

Ichigo’s voice was quiet and muffled, pressed into his shirt. His hair shifted under Isshin’s fingers now, under the breaths he could hardly afford to take.

The hole in his soul gaped wide and terrible.

“He stopped it. He stopped the—”

A child couldn’t understand a hollow, not even a kid as bright as Ichigo. It must have seemed like a monster, come to devour his mother, come to devour Masaki, their sun.

What was a world without a sun?

“Son,” he began, voice breaking and gentle. It was a tone he’d used many times, over the years, to speak to a dozen bereaved families.

It wasn’t one he’d ever wanted to speak to Ichigo with.

“No, she’s not dead. He’s carrying her, she’s hurt but not dead, you have to help her, dad. We are going to protect her. Mommy isn’t, she’s not—”

Ichigo said the words frantically, like the shock had cracked into words and tears. Isshin only heard half of it, eyes narrowing on the space Ichigo had been standing in.

The soul reaper was holding the soul? They hadn’t performed konsō then, for all that the soul chain was definitely severed. Maybe, they didn’t have a Zanpakutō with them, though that was unusual for a soul reaper in the Living World.

Maybe, a traitorously hopeful part of himself said, Masaki’s spirit wanted to stay. He knew it was a lie.

He knew it wasn’t good, either.

Isshin shifted to hold Ichigo closer, to hold him as Masaki had. Isshin had always been affectionate, but Ichigo was Masaki’s son more than his. Ichigo had her soul, the stubborn protectiveness that Isshin had fallen so hard for, all those years ago.

Isshin was a poor replacement, for Masaki’s warmth.

There were words still trembling out of Ichigo, of protection and strength and _she’s not_ , but Isshin couldn’t catch all of them.

He needed to think.

Kisuke, he needed to call Kisuke. He needed to get his family home safe, and protect Masaki’s soul if it was there.

He couldn’t even see her.

“Soul reaper,” he said at the place Ichigo had stood, had been held and protected. “Can you bring her with you, I can’t—“

_I can’t hold her,_ he wanted to say, but the words died quickly in his throat. He looked down at the Ichigo, wondered at the hollow Kisuke had tracked from Masaki's soul to Ichigo’s. It kept Isshin’s powers bound, and kept him weak.

With Masaki's strength, that had been alright. Now, Isshin didn't know if he could stand it, but he would try for his son.

For Masaki's son.

He smiled, as he had once smiled at the funeral of Kaien, as he had smiled at the funeral of so many of his soldiers.

It hurt.

_I can’t ever hold her again._

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

_You broke the rules! Back, back to his beginning!_

With a sigh that felt like it tore from his throat, Starrk leaned down to lift the soul into his arms. He couldn’t leave her here, not when she’d be devoured in minutes by a hollow, or turn into one herself. Not when the kid at his side had looked so sad, either, and the man had asked for help with bowed shoulders and a cracking smile.

He didn’t know where they were headed, but he couldn’t leave when the kid could see her.

“What a pain,” he muttered, walking slow steps after the man. It was strange to walk the world of the living, and not watch souls die before him. It was stranger still to have touched two strangers outside of the rage of a fight.

The eerie laughter of a child echoed in his head, and Starrk’s fingers twitched on the soul in his arms. He’d broken the rules, the laugh had said. What were the rules, and what game had he played?

Somehow, with every weary bone in his body, Starrk knew this was that captain’s fault.

“Y—“

He looked down, startled. The soul was trying to talk, words choked off and quiet in the night air. They were determined too, for all that there were teeth marks gouged deep into her back and she was fading away.

She coughed again, broken and rough. She should have been a hollow in minutes, with wounds like that ripping at her soul. Something was keeping her here, a strength she shouldn’t have had.

Starrk knew a lot about strength that shouldn’t be. He knew more about what the edges of a soul looked like, when it dissolved under his power.

This one wasn’t even frayed.

Had losing Lilynette taken that much from him? Had he become weak, at last? Starrk stepped forward, following the man and the boy. The rain was washing down his hair, but he couldn’t feel it.

If this was the cost for weakness, Starrk didn’t want it.

“You’re a hollow,” the soul managed at last, hands twitching but too weak to reach up.

Starrk paused his steps, long enough for a rain drop to catch on his collar and spill over his skin. He should have known she’d recognize him— this whole family was strange, for all that they were human.

He braced himself for the worst, but it didn’t come.

“T-thank you,” she said, words coughing and bloody. Her soul was strong, to hold on this long from the wounds. “F-for saving him. Thank you.”

Starrk felt the raindrops on his skin, but they hardly registered. The woman had thanked him, even knowing what he was. She had looked past the mask on his throat, and thanked him. Had Starrk ever been thanked before?

He couldn’t remember, he realized.

He hadn’t even saved the kid, not really. He’d followed the ghost of an emotion, and responded to a child crying. There was no kindness in that. Starrk stepped forward, and felt the rain press down on across his shoulders.

He wanted to sleep.

The man was walking with slumped shoulders too, holding the boy so carefully. It looked like he thought the kid might break, shatter like a glass into sand.

It was a look Starrk knew too well.

He hoisted the soul higher, careful not to move her too much. He didn’t know what was keeping him from destroying her— from destroying everyone, as he always had— but he couldn’t put her down. Not when the kid could see her be torn to pieces, or die a slow death to her own fear.

The kid didn’t need to see that.

“Relax, or you won’t make it,” he said, and her eyes fluttered closed. He didn’t know if she’d make it at all, but it was worth saying.

The man led them to bright building, tucked at the end of a street, and two humans and two souls were through the door before Starrk could yawn.

The room the man took them to was bright, clinical. It looked like one of Syazel’s less-used labs, clean but too utilitarian to be the Esapada’s favorite place. There was a spot of color in the corner, bright flowers that stood out against the white and steel.

They were sunflowers, a cheerful yellow that was brighter than the kids hair.

Starrk looked away.

“Kid,” he said, laying the soul across the table used for experiments. Or, healing more likely, considering the man didn’t look like a scientist.

“Tell him I’ll put her here.”

He settled agains the wall after that, and watched a family fall apart over the long hours. The man couldn’t see him, but knew what soul reapers were. The kid could see him, and the woman knew enough to recognize him as a hollow. It was too much, and far too suspicious.

Starrk wished he could fall asleep, and wake to Lilynette’s foot digging into his ribs. He wished he hadn’t played the game.

_You broke them! You broke them, hollow!_

Starrk looked down at the soul spread out on the table, at the reiryoku that leaked free with every shuddering breath. He looked at the kid too, asleep at the table with small fingers clinging to the edge of a tattered shirt. He heard the man a few walls away, making frantic calls to a number that hadn’t answered yet.

Starrk wanted to help.

Had he ever wanted something enough to act on it before? Not alone, he thought. Lilynette had always been the half with the drive, the half that dragged him up and moving. Starrk had only ever wanted to sleep, to give in to the loneliness under his skin. For all that he hated it, still he gave in.

And now he wanted to help.

He sighed, feeling the air gust out like the last wind over a cold desert. He didn’t know much healing, not when everything broke to pieces before he could try to fix it.

But, if he stopped the reiryoku leaks, the soul could survive a few more days before hollowfying. It could ever survive long enough for whatever help the man outside was calling.

Starrk might as well try.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰


	2. Old Wounds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a problem how easy it is to write this fic, when I have so many other projects I'm supposed to be writing. RIP me, tbh, but have a chapter!

Kisuke hadn’t planned for this.

That was a rarity, in his world. He made a dozen plans every heartbeat, and he charted out every moment to know its journey through the threads of the world. The future was less dangerous, when he prepared for the worst and the best and everything in between.

Those plans had grown sharper, after Aizen. The threads had become steel, dancing to Benihime’s fingertips and ready to sew into throats and enemies.

He had grown desperate, after Aizen, and that made everything colder. Kisuke hadn’t had the luxury to be gentle, when he had made this all happen.

So he had planned, and prepared. He had done everything he could, to bring Aizen crashing down.

But he hadn’t planned for Masaki’s death.

He was through the door of the clinic quickly, for all that it had taken him days to get the call. The strange patterns echoing out of Soul Society weren’t something he could afford to ignore, not when he had traced them across two worlds and into the sands of Hueco Mundo.

It was a trap, painted in interesting data and potential threats. Aizen was clever after all, and Kisuke was one of the few dangers left to the man’s plans. The echoes that lingered through space but held no weight— there was a high chance Aizen was involved.

But Kisuke had to investigate patterns like that, even knowing it could have been a lure.

So he’d prepared for it as he always did, with plans and a thousand threads of careful preparation. He’d warned Masaki of it too, and gotten a bright smile in response and a confidence that burned like the sun. She was strong enough to handle any threat to the town, while he was away.

She should have been strong enough.

He stilled, two steps inside, breath catching as his fingers caught on Benihime’s hilt.

Well. That was another thing he hadn’t planned for, another _threat_ he hadn’t planned for, lounging against a wall and blinking dangerous eyes. The man was tall, with the loose posture of a skilled fighter and the lean body to match it. Laying around his neck was the cracked piece of a jaw, hollow-white and damning.

Kisuke felt his mind race with his pulse, but he kept his hands still and face calm. The long years in the Omnitsukidō served him well to not pull out a sword, and the longer years in exile kept his eyes steady.

What was a Vasto Lorde doing, standing vigil beside the shaking pieces of Masaki’s soul? What was a hollow doing, sleeping instead of devouring easy prey? Without Masaki, the Kurosaki family was a buffet laid out for a hungry hollow, ready to be eaten and enjoyed.

And yet this man didn’t shift from the wall.

Kisuke took another step, watching Isshin walk past the hollow like it wasn’t there. And of course, it wasn’t really— for an ex-soul reaper walking the world like a human, a Vasto Lorde’s power would be too great to even sense.

Isshin had no idea what was lingering in his house. Kisuke almost wished he wouldn’t find out, not with Masaki lying dead and soul splintering across the table.

In the back of his mind, Benihime crooned a quiet song, ready with a vicious hunger that Kisuke knew was his own.

But Kisuke only paused, and took another step, the sound of wood on concrete loud and relentless.

A fight here was a poor idea. Kisuke didn’t need experience to tell him that, not when he could feel the hollow’s reiatsu lingering in the air, light as clouds.

But it was strange he hadn’t felt it sooner. The hungry teeth of that reiatsu should have been nipping across his skin long before he stepped into the doors of the clinic.

Another observation to tuck away and plan around.

It didn’t matter, not now; a fight against a Vasto Lorde wasn’t a battle Kisuke was sure he could win, not without damage to the city and too many deaths to count.

The Kurosaki family wouldn’t survive it either, and those weren’t deaths Kisuke could bear.

So, no battle then, even with Benihime crooning the beginnings of funeral song. Negotiations it would be, but there was a more pressing issue to take care of.

Masaki’s soul wasn’t gone.

“Kisuke,” Isshin began, the name hard and desperate. The man’s hands were steady as they shut the door behind him, as a captain’s should be, as a Shiba’s should be.

But his jaw was trembling.

“Kisuke, can you help her? Does she need to be—”

_Cleansed_ , ghosted out between them, rough and broken. It was grim too, the sound of man who would kill his wife to protect her children. But when a hollow roared from the ashes of a soul, it didn't hold the heart. They both knew that. Kisuke’s fingers twitched across Benihime’s hilt, and remembered a hundred years of research.

Kisuke knew that better than most.

He pressed fingers to the wounds dotting Masaki’s soul, felt them for traces of reiatsu. The wounds were deep and vicious, but they didn’t match the power Kisuke could feel in the air, corrosive and hungry but scattered.

The Vasto Lorde hadn’t done this, then.

Another thread in the data that Kisuke would tease out and understand. He let a healing kidō spread from his fingers to swirl around the table, testing the strength of Masaki’s soul. There was enough power left to heal her wounds, enough that Kisuke could mend the pieces until she was whole again.

She wouldn’t live, not with her body dead and the chain of fate severed. But she could linger here, for a few days, before he sent her to Soul Society. He glanced at the hollow, and felt Benihime go quiet in the corner of his mind.

There was more reiatsu than there should have been.

“She’s remarkably stable, considering the depth of these wounds. No signs of hollowfication. We can save her from that at least, but her body will not recover. I’m surprised you recovered her soul at all, Isshin.”

He didn’t look away from the hollow as he spoke, but the man only shifted against the wall in response, as if deep in the beginnings of sleep.

Kisuke would swallow Benihime whole, if the man was asleep.

Isshin’s eyes flashed, long enough for Kisuke to know the man understood. For all that Isshin played the fool— and was a fool, in many ways— the man was intelligent enough to earn his rank.

He knew that if Kisuke asked, there was something wrong.

“I’m not going to do anything.”

The words were quiet, tired. They sounded like they’d been ripped the last shreds of care the hollow had to give, and then drifted down to fall across the floor.

Kisuke shot the hollow a smile, but it never made it through the shadows around his eyes.

“No, I don’t think you will,” he said, and meant every word. The hollow could have devoured the entire town without much effort, destroyed every soul in the city.

One small family would have meant nothing, before that power.

“But how good of you to wake up and join us. I hope you had pleasant dreams.”

He shifted forward, kidō tracing across Masaki’s back and threading into the jagged marks left by teeth. Her shoulders used to be strong and powerful, lined with the muscle of a Quincy who had trained at the bow all her life.

They still were, but they were too ripped apart to tell now.

Vaguely, he hoped Isshin had kept Ichigo from seeing this. He knew what death like this did to a child, the wounds it left. Kisuke didn’t think Masaki would have wanted Ichigo to bear those marks, for all that it made for ruthless fighters.

She’d always been the best of them.

“Hollows don’t dream,” the man said, with a sigh and the slow blink of eyes. It sounded tired, with a bone deep weariness Kisuke wondered at.

What would it be like, to never be haunted by the memories of your mistakes in sleep?

Kisuke didn’t know, but it didn’t matter; they haunted him cheerily as he was awake, too. He smiled again, let the expression grow disarming and curious. It didn’t take much, not when his fingers were healing wounds that should have scabbed over into hollow-skin.

“With marks this deep, its a wonder she didn’t die on the spot. Interesting, wouldn’t you say?”

Isshin made a noise beside him, sharp and strained, but Kisuke didn’t look away from the man in the corner. Tired eyes stared him down like he was a threat, but the hollow only sighed. The man glanced up, eyes catching on the corner of the house above them.

Where Ichigo slept, Kisuke knew, after setting out the wards around this house. The wards the hollow had managed to slip through, untouched and unmarked. Kisuke kept his fingers steady, even as threads of possibility spooled out before him.

Was that the prey the man was after? A boy with too much reiryoku and the blood of a Quincy and a soul reaper?

He moved his hands again, catching the smaller wounds under his fingers and healing with a quite hum. As tempting as Ichigo might be to a hungry hollow, that didn’t quite fit. The hollow could have taken the boy any time before Kisuke arrived, and left Masaki to devour or be devoured.

No, Kisuke had spent enough of his life in exile to know that what lingered in those eyes was more like loneliness.

Strange.

“Though I am curious.” He said, as the last kidō faded from his fingers. He stepped closer, the edge of his cane swinging in a careless curve. Benihime crooned a quiet melody as she moved, threading through his skin and into the edge of his smile.

Kisuke, for once, let it show.

“Why would a Vasto Lorde be sleeping on in a clinic in the living world?”

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

It had been three days since Masaki died, and Isshin had planned a funeral and an execution. He had not planned how to tell the children, and wasn’t sure he ever would. He had not planned how to face them, beyond the broken pieces of his heart.

Now he was wondering if he should plan his own death too.

A Vasto Lorde, Kisuke had said, with pointed words and slight smile. There was a Vasto Lorde sleeping in his clinic.

Isshin didn’t have the strength for this. He didn’t have the strength to be a father and a fighter right now either. Isshin could only stand up, and stare at the empty space Kisuke had spoken to.

Had a Vasto Lorde carried his wife’s broken body back? Had it held Ichigo? Masaki had survived longer than she should have, Kisuke said.

Did that mean Isshin owed a hollow his thanks?

He didn’t know, but he could only stare at the corner of the shop and feel like a failure.

Masaki would have known what to do. Masaki had always known what to do, in moments like these. Her eyes had been steady and strong, but her heart and kindness had been stronger. Isshin had the experience of command under his fingers, but no power.

He couldn’t protect his family.

There was a moment of fraught silence, with Kisuke staring sharp eyes at the corner. Then the man relaxed, a laugh ghosting out and cracking in the air. It sounded curious, and the look on Kisuke’s face could only be described as intrigued.

Isshin only had the energy to care that he’d invited an enemy into their home. 

“He’s gone, Isshin.”

He pressed a hand to the wall, felt it ground him. The surface was cold beneath his fingers, clinical and clean. Isshin felt like he’d been thrown into his own surgery and cut open, but for Masaki he’d stand tall.

He would.

He looked towards the table again, forcing questions out and pressing his mind to think. Kisuke could do the planning for the two of them, but Isshin had to be here.

“Was it an enemy? Is she—“

Kisuke’s hand waved, lazy and casual. The man’s eyes were staring out Isshin’s door, bright with the interest of a scientist. Isshin didn’t know if he should be concerned for the Vasto Lorde, but all he could think of was Ichigo’s eyes.

They hadn’t looked scared, when they looked up at the man Isshin couldn’t see.

“Your lovely wife’s soul will be fine. And it was no enemy.”

The tension drained out of him in a flash, but Isshin stood strong. He still needed to be a father, and he couldn’t fall here. He needed to get the girls to bed, to tell them how much their mother loved them, how much she cared.

He needed to let Ichigo see Masaki again, and so he couldn’t be weak for all that he was a failure.

He sighed again, shifted away from the table. He didn’t want to leave her, not even now. But she would have smacked him, if he wasn’t a father before a husband.

“I hope you got something good out of my reaction, Kisuke,” he said as he stepped away. There was a quiet smile in return, and the shadows of Kisuke’s hat grew darker.

“I couldn’t possibly know what you mean, Isshin.”

Isshin looked at the table, where Masaki lay and he could not see. He took another step forward, and felt the weight of a haori he’d gladly put aside pull down his shoulders.

He couldn’t hold her.

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Starrk had know the man was trouble from the moment he stepped into the room. Hollows earned a sharp sense of danger, as they walked across the sands of Hueco Mundo. Under the glinting moonlight, they were predators and prey, motivated by fear and hunger alike.

Starrk had lost both, but he still had the instincts of a hunter.

Those instincts had stirred, at the sight of sharp eyes and a lazy posture. They had stirred at a quiet laugh, and a cheerful smile Starrk had seen mirrored on Aizen’s face.

But that was no surprise, though the man himself was.

The Espada had been warned about Urahara Kisuke. Efficient, Tōsen said, blind eyes staring into space. Sneaky sneaky, Gin said, eyes closed and threatening.

Do not kill him, Aizen had said, and his eyes had been unchanging.

Starrk had taken note of the danger in that look, and moved on to sleep away the days. He’d be ready and wary when the time came, guns drawn and mind sharp. If he had to fight someone who made Aizen nervous, he had better be ready.

But he didn’t have to fight now, and he didn’t have to be wary. He could leave instead, and he did, stepping out of the clinical room before the weight of Urahara’s pointed questions.

No one wanted a Vasto Lorde to stay beside a human, and there was no point in lingering after Urahara had meandered through the door. The man’s hands had moved over the woman and healed her, power bleeding out of his fingers in controlled bursts. It swirled out around the cracked edges of her soul, mended and sticked it back together.

It took ten minutes. In three days Starrk had only managed to stop more damage.

There had been no point in staying.

Urahara had looked very human, at first glance, but he moved too easily through the world, too quick, with too many smiles. Was it a soul reaper habit, to be as disarming as possible? It was a good strategy, if it was a strategy at all.

Starrk thought it must work, for the most part. If he had the energy to care, he would have watched more closely. He already saw the danger, but Starrk knew enough to know he hadn’t really seen any of the knives lingering in the sand. Any man who made Aizen nervous was more dangerous than Starrk could know.

But he’d sat at the bedside of a dying stranger for three days, and watched her son cling to her hand for three nights. Starrk didn’t have the energy to care how dangerous Urahara was. He wasn’t fool enough to think the man couldn’t kill him, but he wasn’t going to attack.

So he left, after the woman was healed. He didn’t want to stay and answer questions, not when the father’s face had been more horrified than shocked.

Starrk had kept her alive, and that was enough.

He didn’t have a place to go, not really. Three days lingering beside humans had shown him he’d grown too weak to kill, even if his reiatsu curled across his skin with hungry fangs. The sands of Hueco Mundo called him with a quiet loneliness and the ruthless press of wind on his skin. But he didn’t think they’d feel like home, without Lilynette at his side.

He didn’t want them to.

So he wandered through the living world on lonely feet, even though he was never alone. He walked without purpose until he came to a quiet park, settled between low buildings and bright with life and grass.

It had been a long time since Starrk had seen grass. It felt like it had been longer still, since he’d slept.

Starrk let himself fall to the ground with a sigh, deep and quiet. The ground was cold, with the lingering hints of night’s chill, and for a moment Starrk remembered the press of endless rain.

But the morning sun overhead was warm, and there was a man laughing a few feet away with a bright voice. There was a younger voice overlapping it too, a girl’s quiet laughter whispering over the grass.

Both were like a sword to the gut.

He closed his eyes, let the sun wash across his skin. He could have this, for a moment. Starrk could sit in the living world and sleep away the ache in his soul. The war he couldn’t sense could wait a few minutes, if it was even waiting.

_Back, back to the start!_

Starrk thought the war would be waiting a long time, so he closed his eyes and fell asleep to the sound of a man’s laughter, and a girl’s quiet giggling.

He slept in the sun, until the souls around him began to die.

It took longer than usual, like a hand stretched in front of his reiatsu and stopped it from destroying everything in sight. But slowly, slowly, the man to his left sank to the ground like every breath was hard to take. The girl he had heard laughing— she had bright orange hair, he could see that now that his eyes were open and his soul was aching— was kneeling and not laughing. She let out a choked gasp, broken like it was hard to take.

Starrk knew that gasp, as he knew nothing else. He had heard it a thousand times before, in the moments before a soul’s ribs cracked and gave way to his power.

He didn’t want to hear the rest.

He stood with a sigh, weariness cracking into his bones. It was a bright and sunny day, but he felt like the rain had come again to wash more of him away.

It was time to leave. It was time to go back to the sands, and the lonely existence he didn’t understand. Maybe he’d find Aizen. Maybe he wouldn’t. Starrk didn’t know what the captain’s zanpakutō had done to him, but he knew that he wasn’t anywhere near the war.

_Back, back you go! Back you go, rule-breaker!_

He sighed again, under a sky that didn’t rain, and a day that was clear and bright as anything he’d ever seen.

The sun of Los Noches really didn’t compare to the real thing.

It took him a heartbeat to open a garganta, the rip in reality shaking to life before him.But small fingers stopped him before he could step through, tugging at his robes just as Lilynette used to. 

Smalle fingers stopped him, and there were no gasping breaths digging into his ears.

Starrk looked down, mind racing and soul shaking. It was the kid from before, with bright hair and brighter eyes. His face was red with tears but determined, and the hand on Starrk’s clothes shook but clung tight.

He looked small, but Starrk couldn’t see it. His eyes were on the man from before, and the girl that had laughed beside him.

They were walking away, untouched and healthy. They were laughing again, loud and unrestrained in the light of morning. Distantly, he could feel the shifting pressure that told him Urahara standing a few feet away, reiatsu polite but not hidden.

It was a threat, he knew, but Starrk couldn’t concentrate on that.

The man was fine. The girl with the bright hair was fine too, for all that he had heard her breath crack. Starrk’s power had stopped eating at the air, had stopped crushing souls beneath its weight like a wolf ripping into easy prey.

It had stopped.

Starrk looked down at the kid again, and met a stare that was afraid but steady. The kid wasn’t smiling— Starrk had only seen him smile when he was sitting next to the injured soul, and even then it had been a sad thing.

“Kid,” he began, throat tight and wariness crawling up his spine. “What are you?”

“Ichigo,” came the first response, quiet and determined. There were tears in the back of the kid’s eyes, but he wasn’t crying now. “You can’t go, you can’t. You helped her. I’m—”

There were real tears now, leaking out of frustrated eyes and streaming down the boy’s face. The kid— Ichigo, and damn if that didn’t match the hair— was still staring up at him with something like desperation.

Starrk looked at those eyes and saw a different pair entirely.

“How interesting,” Urahara said, as Starrk’s felt his reiatsu swirl against something that could match it. He didn’t look up, and didn’t shift.

It was the kid. It was all the kid.

“ _Very_ interesting. Why don’t you come back to the clinic, Vasto Lorde-san. I’m sure Masaki would like to thank the man that saved her.”

The words were light and playful, teasing as a breeze over sand. Starrk thought they had enough knives to skin him and leave him to dry. Even his hierro couldn’t take plans that made Aizen pause, after all.

But right now, he couldn’t care. 

“And you have some questions,” Starrk guessed, voice flat as he could make it. It almost trembled, but he didn’t mind.

The kid had stopped his reiatsu. Ichigo had stopped him from killing everything in sight, had given the laughter back to the girl with bright hair.

In all his lonely years, Starrk had never found anything like this.

“So distrustful! I’m a man of science, you know. I always have questions, especially about such an interesting person as you. ”

Starrk looked up at last, met the man’s look head on and watched bright eyes shift under a patchwork hat. There was a smile on Urahara’s face like the man was inviting him to learn a thousand secrets, like Starrk was a specimen to be studied and broken to pieces.

It was meant to be disarming, he knew. He didn’t care. He’d known Urahara was dangerous from the first, an ambush predator waiting to strike.

Starrk, with a small hand curled in his robes, couldn’t give a damn.

He wasn’t alone.


	3. A Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? publishing non-uraichi things this week? Yes. 
> 
> Enjoy!

It was only at the entrance to the building he’d left, not hours ago, that Starrk realized what the game was.

_Go back to the beginning_ , the shadows had said, in the eerie tone of a child’s laugh. Starrk had stood among monsters for too long to be afraid of children. He was a monster himself, and so he didn’t shiver under that sound.

But he did sigh, deep and tired.

In bold strokes across the door before him was written _Kurosaki Clinic_. Kurosaki, Starrk thought, and looked down at the boy clinging to his leg. Bright eyes looked back at him, with the bright orange hair to match.

Starrk really wished he paid closer attention to the long Espada meetings. Maybe if he’d been awake during those meetings, he’d have recognized the boy sooner. He’d always trusted Lilynette to stay awake, sleeping through all but the most dangerous information. She’d kick him in the side afterwards, tell him the most important details. He felt the phantom press of a foot to his ribs.

It was a match for the gaping hole in his soul.

“The kid’s name— is it Kurosaki Ichigo?” His question was quiet, and it didn’t echo but sigh through the air. He thought he knew the game now, and so he had even less reason to care.

Starrk wanted to sleep.

“Why yes, that’s correct. You sound like you recognize it, Hollow-san.”

Starrk sighed again, shooting the man a flat look. Urahara only raised his hands with a laugh that was too light and a smile that never reached shadowed eyes. The man took a backwards step, cane hanging from a single finger. To anyone else, the gesture would have looked like a peace offering.

Starrk knew Urahara was making room to draw a sword, should the worst happen. He was too tired for this.

“It was an innocent question, Vasto Lorde-san. No need to glare so harshly. No need to look so guarded either. We couldn’t hurt you even if we tried, I’m sure.”

Starrk didn’t bother correcting him on how very wrong that was. The man already knew, after all, and was playing the shopkeeper as cleverly as that captain had played the fool.

Both were easy to see through, when Starrk was so wary.

He was tired, so very tired. It felt like each movement was painful, sore and filled with a strength Starrk didn’t have.

But he was less tired than he’d been standing on a battlefield and fighting for a cause he didn’t believe in. He wished he could have thanked Aizen all the same, even if it had meant nothing in the end. Believing in the lie had been a small comfort in a lonely life.

But Starrk didn’t need that right now. He looked down at Ichigo, felt small fingers tug at the fabric of his pants. They were strong, for all that they were too tight and too nervous.

He was less tired than he’d ever been.

There was a shift from beside him, as Urahara moved closer. The edge of danger had faded from the man’s step, but the threat remained in sharp eyes.

Starrk couldn’t care.

“It’s terribly rude to not introduce yourself, after you already seem to know me. You have me at a disadvantage.”

Starrk had never said a word about knowing Urahara. He never said more than he had to in front of a man this sharp. It was a test, but it didn’t matter.

Starrk didn’t need to care.

“Starrk,” he said at last, stepping across the threshold and into the warmth of a home that wasn’t his. A warm hand had led him here, small fingers steady against his leg, but he was still a stranger. It was nothing new— Starrk had been a wanderer for his whole life in a world that couldn’t bear his touch.

Being a stranger was better than being a murderer.

“Coyote Starrk.”

The air inside the clinic was tense, but it didn’t feel dangerous. It didn’t quite feel like Starrk was the danger either, for all that Urahara’s eyes were sharp, and the other man— Kurosaki Isshin, Starrk thought, and wished he’d stayed awake— was staring without seeing.

It felt cold.

“Well, Starrk-san. Welcome to Karakura. It’s not often we have a guest like you, you know? It’s an honor to host you,” Urahara said, with a gentle smile and eyes that lingered in shadows.

Starrk wanted to sigh. He wanted to curl up on the floor and sleep.

But he didn’t want to leave, not when Ichigo’s small fingers held a net to catch his poison.

The woman with the bright hair was smiling, when he looked away from Urahara and into the room beyond. She looked kind, Starrk thought, and wondered how quickly she would have died in Hueco Mundo. Kindness wasn’t something he saw often on the sands of a brutal desert. It was something he saw less, in Aizen’s palace.

Kindness was a luxury only humans could give freely. Hollows had to earn the right to be kind, with blood and hunger and power. And even then it came with a cost.

Starrk could have been kind to everyone, if he could have stood near them. If he could have cared, with the moon glinting overhead and the unchanging sands cold beneath him.

He was never kind.

But the woman was smiling, and there was a small hand gripping his clothes and keeping him from destroying the world. The kid— Aizen’s greatest enemy, and wasn’t that a strange thought, that Starrk had wandered across time and space to land in the hands of four people Aizen had actually been wary enough of to fear— ran to his mother’s side as they stepped nearer. A flash of orange hair caught under the lights, too bright to be ignored.

Starrk felt cold, for a quiet heartbeat he didn’t have. Something about walking through the sunlight with a child at his side had been soothing.

It felt like he’d had pack again. And with the open sore of a wound lingering on his soul, that was the most important thing of all.

“Ah it’s my hollow savior! Don’t let these two chase you away next time, alright? I can’t believe they let you get away before I could thank you properly.”

He blinked, over the sound of her smile and the tension of the men. He blinked again, when she turned that smile down to shine at Ichigo. It was so bright. Starrk hadn’t seen anything like it, not even under Aizen’s false sun and the eyes that never slept.

It made him want to close his own eyes and sleep.

He didn’t know how to handle this woman. She was so cheerful, and there was no hatred in her eyes. The entire family moved around her, Ichigo clinging to her skirt and Kurosaki Isshin from before taking desperate steps around the table.Kurosaki was following the guide of his son, to stand near the wife he couldn’t even see. The family revolved around her, in perfect sync as the Espada had never been.

There was a fragile happiness glinting in the air, like the last moments of company before friends died beneath his reiatsu.

Starrk thought she might be their sun.

He looked away. He looked away, to Urahara standing beside him, to the room that had worn tables and gentle decorations. Starrk looked away, because he’d already lost the warmth. 

“Give me a break. They didn’t chase me off,” he said, stepping back to lean against the wall. He couldn’t slouch enough to sleep with enemies nearby, but he wanted to. He wanted to not feel a hole in his soul where a sun had been. “I just didn’t want to fight.”

“Oh, we hardly would have fought, Starrk-san,” Urahara replied, settling beside him. Starrk didn’t bother to hide his disbelief.

“Because it would have been a real fight.”

“Is he here? Why did he come?” Kurosaki interrupted before Urahara could respond, speaking over the last of Starrk’s words. The man’s eyes were firm, as his jaw was firm, as his hands were steady.

But Starrk had spent three days lingering at the man’s side and watching his fingers shake, and those eyes were too red to disguise. The man had lost a sun, slow as watching a soul dissolve.

Starrk knew what that was like.

“He’s here, Kurosaki-san. He hasn’t injured anyone, and he came on his own. Didn’t you, Starrk-san?”

Starrk felt his skin prickle with the echoes of a human response. He hadn’t grown to become strong without fear, and he felt hints of it now, honed and turned into battle-sense. His hierro was too thick to be pierced by most blades, but somehow, he thought Urahara would manage.

No one said something like that without a reason.

He turned to face the man, in a quiet room, in a quiet clinic, in a quiet town. He turned to face the man because Starrk could afford to.

“What do you want me to do?”

The sun answered first.

“Kisuke-san, tell Isshin not to be silly. Ichigo likes our new friend, so of course he’ll stay. You can make him a gigai.” There was no doubt in her tone, and for all that her soul was frayed, it was strong.

She meant it, Starrk realized, feeling disbelief dig sharp fangs into his throat. She was offering him a place, and for however long that offer lasted, it was still an offer.

Strange.

“For such a loyal customer as Kurosaki-san, I’m sure something could be arranged,” Urahara said, eyes flashing in the shadows beneath his hat. Somehow, that felt more threatening than anything else.

But Starrk couldn’t focus on that, not really. The human soul was standing before him, with a smile and bright eyes. She could see him, and she didn’t run.

Those that didn’t run usually died, but there would be no dead souls today— not with the small fingers that had curled into his clothes and stopped him.

“I’m sure I would be happy to study the effects of your reiatsu too,” the man continued, and Starrk knew there would be no choice at all, with that offer laid out like a feast on the sands. If there was anyone in the world who could control his power, it would be Urahara Kisuke. Starrk had spent too long killing on accident to walk away from a cure. 

He sighed, deep and tired. Then he looked at the woman with the bright eyes, and said the only thing he could.

“Yeah, I’ll stay.”

⊱ ━━━━.⋅❈⋅.━━━━ ⊰

Kisuke took a strange pleasure in watching Starrk watch the Kurosaki family. Starrk moved through the clinic with a lazy ease, motions small and efficient. Every step echoed like it took too much work, and sharp eyes were closed more often than not.

But Kisuke had watched him, when Ichigo had grabbed at white clothes. He had watched, as Starrk’s eyes went wide and the calloused hands had shaken.

He had watched the hollow show emotion, and that was the most curious of all.

“Tell your father I love him again, Ichigo,” Masaki said, sitting at the table with an expression half love-sick and half determined. It wasn’t as soft as Kisuke remembered, from the few days he had lingered long enough to stay for Kurosaki family dinners.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure he’d attended a dinner in years. His fingers drummed a beat across the hilt of Benihime, the warm metal soothing. She hummed a crooning melody in response, a low dirge to echo into his bones. She was always with him.

He wondered when he’d last spoken to someone outside of the shop. It had been months, before the encounter with Starrk. It had been years since he’d pulled his mind off the plans for the future, and that wouldn’t change until Aizen was beaten.

But maybe Kisuke should get out more.

“Mom, he’s heard it so much today,” the words were quiet, spoken through the beginnings of a frown. But Ichigo’s hand hadn’t left the edge of Masaki’s dress, clinging to the fabric like it was a lifeline and the boy was drowning. It had left the hollow’s clothes after the boy had dragged Starrk into the clinic and within the reach of Masaki’s force of will.

But no one was dying. Kisuke still couldn’t feel the corrosive power of the hollow’s reiatsu, eating at his skin with hungry teeth. The counterweight of Ichigo’s humanity was working, an ocean come to wash away fresh poison. Kisuke wanted to study that response more, wanted to understand it even as the threads of theories lingered above Benihime’s handle.

He wanted answers.

“For me, Ichigo,” Masaki said, smile brighter than the sun. There was a small pause, and Kisuke watched Ichigo shift and fidget across the chair. He watched Starrk watch it too, eyes mostly closed but fingers too restless for sleep.

Kisuke hadn’t seen a hollow with hope in its eyes before, but nothing was impossible, given time and power. Kisuke knew that better than anyone.

“Dad, mom says she loves you.”

Ichigo’s words were quiet and muttered, eyes red from tears but voice steady. The words of a child, speaking for his parents. The words of someone who didn’t even know what love was, let alone why it made his mother’s smile tremble.

Kisuke hadn’t been fast enough.

Isshin took a breath, like it was painful and like it was beautiful. The man’s hands were shaking.

“Masaki,” Isshin began, and the rest of the words were lost to incoherent love and tears.

Kisuke took a step back, and watched. He imagined Starrk had never seen an adult man melt into the floor quite so quickly before, but Isshin was far from a normal man. He was far from a man at all, with the bond that tied his powers and soul to Masaki.

Humans were truly incredible creatures.

Kisuke stopped closer to Starrk, after Ichigo fell asleep across Masaki’s lap. He stepped to stand beside the hollow, just as the hollow stepped out of the circle of quiet family.

They left the room without words.

Kisuke caught him in the doorway, close enough that the press of Ichigo didn’t stop, but far enough they couldn’t be heard. It was deep into the night, and a time for quiet conversations and quieter smiles. Kisuke was a master of both.

“Running from the festivities so quickly, Starrk-san? I promise children don’t bite.”

An odd look passed across the man’s face, like the shadows of a ghost crossing over a grave. It looked quiet, and painful in a way even Kisuke didn't quite understand. But he thought, with all his genius, he could make a guess.

“Not these children,” Starrk said, and Kisuke thought his guess was painfully right. He laughed, quiet against the background of Isshin’s dramatic declarations of love, filtering around them. The sound spread through the air, gentle enough that Kisuke almost felt hope.

But hope was a dangerous luxury, and one Kisuke could never afford. He would plan the future he wanted, and not the one he hoped for. There was too much at stake to hope for a better future, when he could weave one together with all his skill.

But hope was so very tempting.

He turned to the man again, and didn’t watch sharp eyes shift. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

The hollow looked away at Kisuke’s words, towards the chaos behind them. The girls had been carried downstairs, and were staring desperately at the space beside Ichigo, as if they could will Masaki into a body. They were too young to really understand what had happened, but they knew their mother was there but not _there_.

They could only stare at a blurry vision and cry for a mother.

Kisuke wondered if not giving Masaki a gigai was the kindest decision he’d ever made. He wondered if she wanted one. He wondered many things, standing near the woman he’d saved twice, but never quite fast enough.

“Not as many as you,” Starrk said at last, with the kind of certainty Kisuke didn’t expect from a stranger.

Even more curious, indeed. Theories were spiraling out from Kisuke’s thoughts, a thousand things those words could mean. None of them were quite right, not yet.

But they were all possible, and with the broken look Starrk wore around Ichigo and the girls, Kisuke would have the time to gather more data.

He would have at least as long as it took to block the hollow’s reiatsu from destroying souls, he thought, watching Starrk close lonely eyes.

The next few days proved him right. Starrk settled beside the Kurosaki family, never fitting in but never standing out. Kisuke stayed as long as the hollow did, making a point of asking questions, of laughing and smiling and trying to trick the man into giving him information.

Starrk never even flinched, for all that the hollow never stopped sighing.

How curious, Kisuke thought, as he settled beside Masaki on the third day. How very curious indeed. He’d need to dig deeper later, to weave a full picture of how Starrk could change his plans.

But that was a problem for the future. There was something much more painful, waiting in the present.

Masaki was sitting beside him, and her smile was fading.

“I can’t stay here, can I?”

Kisuke didn’t smile. He didn’t shift either, not when the silence between them ate at his skin. His hand on Benihime’s handle was steady, as his heart was.

“No. No, I’m afraid you can’t.”

The words were quick and brutal, but that was no surprise. Despite his soft heart, Kisuke had learned to be ruthless. Aizen had taught him that, in the century of exile and years spent drowning in his own guilt. Yoruichi had too, in the long decades Kisuke had spent in the Onmitsukidō.

Speed was kindness, when it came to crushing hope. And while Kisuke had never been kind, he had always been quick.

Masaki was dead, and powerless. The dead couldn’t linger among the living without power, not even now. Not even with children tugging at her skirt, and a husband with desperate eyes and a wide smile.

Not even when she was loved.

“Thank you, Kisuke-san.”

Kisuke pulled his hat down, shifted until the shadows ate at his guilt with hungry teeth. They could never devour it all, but they tried.

Kisuke had to try.

“Ah, Kurosaki-san, you shouldn’t be thanking me. I’m a humble shopkeeper, after all. I’ve really done little.”

He had not done enough, for all that he’d tried. He’d begun all this in the first place, by building a weapon he couldn’t control. Kisuke had spent a century paying for that mistake, and the cost only grew with every day.

He hadn’t done enough.

“Stop that,” she said, smile bright and sunny. It burned too hot, but Kisuke had his hat and shadows to hide beneath. Deflection was always something he had excelled at. “You gave me a few days, and that’s more than I would have had. You’ll have to look after them all while I’m gone, you know! And I expect you to look after yourself too.”

Kisuke almost laughed. Look after them, huh? Did he really know how to look after anyone, for all the years he’d spent trying?

He didn’t know, but he would try. He owed the Kurosaki family that much.

“Now now, Kurosaki-san. I can’t have all that responsibility, surely. You’ll have to return to help me.”

The waves of his fan stirred the air between them, even as Starrk slept a few feet away and the children moved around a quiet table. Isshin was fussing with Yuzu’s hair, shoulders tight and terrible for all that his hands were gentle.

Kisuke didn’t speak loud enough for him to hear, but Isshin knew what they were discussing. The man had to— he’d been a captain after all, standing bright and proud in soul society.

He knew that souls couldn’t linger.

“You’ll do fine, Kisuke.” Masaki laughed as she spoke, smile quiet and sunny. But the hands on the table were trembling, fingers going white with strain.

Kisuke, with all the mercy he could muster, pretended not to see.

**Author's Note:**

> Come hit me up on [my server](https://discord.gg/7tn2ywb) for prompts and general tomfoolery, and my [twitter](https://twitter.com/gotcocomilk) or [tumblr](https://thehoardofthegreatdragon.tumblr.com) for stupidity. 
> 
> I love hear if I wrote a particularly captivating or interesting line-- feel free to include it in a comment to feed your friendly neighborhood writing monster.


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